Well continue to fight the fight, if you’re always right, I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. You began the harassment troll, but at least I know you’re always right and come to Diablo 4 forums to share this with us. Figured you’d be out earning a Nobel prize or something with that always right brain of yours. 
I wasnt in the dark. I saw all of the beta footage, read the articles and the reviews. I just dont get why someone would give money to a company that is so despicable and greed infested scum as you put it.
That’s crazy, so no one knew how unfinished the game was, except you? No details emerged past what was seen pre release except NDAs. Yet you purchased it, but instead come to troll others on the forums instead of playing your beloved tittle? That seems odd…
So are you saying someone with an NDA shared the state of the game with you?
Anyone that watched the betas, read the reviews and had any experience with newly released online games would know what to expect. I mean I did, why didnt you? In either case why are you giving money to such a horrible company?
I had not realized the depth blizzard had sunk to, and no one knew the extent the release would not be up to standards of typical arpg genre. Seems odd you must think I’m a learning machine. I purchased, then refunded, then a friend purchased for me and they only played for a week. What’s next on your troll agenda, hit me.
It must just be me but I wouldnt give money to a company I thought so poorly of. I just couldnt get over feeling like a huge hypocrite. Everyone is different though.
The combos we need are massacre stacks like in D3 and Immortal.
That makes sense, but you consistently insinuate that others have the same insider knowledge like you. You are incorrect, and people are allowed to utilize facts and historical operations to develop new and informed opinions. Everyone is different you state… that seems like a little hypocritical of you. Nice one.
I had no insider knowledge, i just used what was available to everyone…oh and used my brain. Supporting a company you find so vile, that is just really out there. I dont think I will ever get that.
You again are being consistent with your hypocrisy as I just clarified. Thanks for proving me right! I never stated I support them… I did however purchase a title from them prior to being released, meaning you knew the same information I did, meaning you knew nothing past the starting area and lv 25. Good luck on your trolling path!! You’re super cute when you keep trying to troll though, love it!!
Yes, you support them buy giving them money. I knew what I was getting, why didnt you. Were you incapable? You were willing to give money to a greed infested scum company though and then continue to engage and interact with their products for 9 months afterwards. How does someone do that?
Nevermind, dont bother. Its way too hypocritical for me.
I wouldn’t take the combo’s more than 3 or max 4 levels deep. There aren’t many enemies in the game that can withstand more than a couple of powered up skills. What I would suggest is 2 or 3 button combos with the finisher being either a short press for 1 option and a long press for a second option.
Additionally you drop the builder/spender mechanic that nobody likes and each basic skill builds a combo for a core or mastery skill. So you build up the most powerful combo with basic, basic, core, mastery with the short or long press to get one of two bigger attacks. Alternatively you could use a shorter combo of basic, basic with a long press of the core skill.
That depends on the ethos of the company, whether they only talk a big game in essence. They have the wherewithal to innovate, let alone under Microsoft. I don’t really understand where you’re getting the “massive overhaul of how the mechanics of skills work entirely”. That’s just a bunch of words. One thing I intended is for this to be an addition to the base game, not to overhaul it. Likewise, that majority of an attrited playerbase you refer to can stay clear of this let’s call it system, which is complex and unintuitive mostly in comparison to the idiotic ceiling the game currently has. Idiots can always be accommodated (easily amused), you just don’t restrict your playerbase to them. In practice the example I’ve given could well be in the basic realm for most people. You just don’t know that because the idiots that work in the gaming industry presently can’t think of giving people a chance to experience something more. The ironic thing is that if you ask them why their games are so basic they’ll basically call the players idiots, of course not as succinctly as I do. It’s the two-point circle of idiocy and it does a disservice to both sides. You justify it enough you’ll find enough idiots on both sides to maintain the status quo despite how enervating it demonstrably is, and punk investors who don’t play games and indeed know they might be bad for you only care if money keeps flowing.
What PoE does is throw a whole bunch of sht at people and basically tell them, “Figure it out.” Ironically the gameplay apparently sucks just as much as it does here. What I have outlined is actually a lot simpler and more intuitive, not to mention the endgame loot delivery mechanism paces it out, it’s just that no one is making an effort to see what it actually translates to. PoE stays in the math realm whereas this moves to the decision and action realm that is both much simpler and offers much more bang for your buck - it’s much more aligned with both what people can do and what they enjoy. I find all these designer and developer zits ironically pretentious - so much complexity for so little value. You don’t let a bunch of effectively low-powered autists make games for you because you end up with the bizarre paradox that is this ARPG genre.
Twenty comments into this convo I wanted to post a facepalm image but the forum decided that’s a power we can’t be trusted with. You can see why.
What I suggest is a little more sophisticated and open-ended. I also didn’t want to disturb the rest of the game but add to it, improve what people dislike in that manner, and avoid that dreaded massive overhauling of all mechanical systemic constructs and such.
From a programming perspective, the current system could not easily incorporate what you’re pitching. It would pretty much have to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. You can’t just add in a code that’ll suddenly make combos a thing and expect it to work on top of the spaghetti code they already have. That’s mostly what I’m getting at. Aside from a possible expansion or an entirely different game, I just don’t see them incorporating a change like this, that for them, would take years to program. I’m judging this off of the numerous oversights, exploits, glitches, and bugs currently within the system.
For us it’s easy to say “well other games have it”, yea but they also use an entirely different engine to code with. Speaking as a programmer it would be the equivalent of knowing how to drive a car, to knowing how to drive a motorized boat. They’re both vehicles, but functionally work differently then each other.
I completely agree with you.
The average gamer is typically unexperienced I would say. Not so much that they’re idiotic, but they haven’t experienced multiple games with various mechanics that might mimic each other. I’ll give an example, two of the most intuitive video games that require almost no instruction are Super Mario Bros. 1 and Mega Man. You can figure out just about anything in those games by pressing buttons. For those of us who have played these games, and we see another iteration of said games we know instinctively how the game is going to work for the most part.
Now take a game like Street Fighter that has basic outputs of attacks, but in order to actually use their skills you need to know the sequence of button presses to achieve them. Now granted some characters are easier to learn then others, but without prior knowledge and being brand new to the game, you would be lost without at least an instruction manual telling you how to preform these moves.
Why is this important though? Because a lot of Shareholding Gaming Studios bank on the unexperienced gamer (both old and new). They want their games to be easy to get into, easy to understand, and require little thought beyond “press button makes your character do something”. Again I’m not saying your system is bad, by all means I would love to see it in a Diablo type game, I’m just saying I don’t ever see it happening for Diablo 4 itself. Maybe Diablo 5? Hard to say at this point.
This is the key, again going back to Shareholder Gaming Studios, they don’t care if the product is good, they just want it to attract the average gamer, make sales, and continue to make revenue throughout its life span. It’s not to say that these games can’t be good, they absolutely can, but it’s taken about 2 decades to see the slow decline of Blizzard products over the years. They used to be known for innovation, improving on existing ideas, setting a new standard, now they’re known for unfinished products, MTX, and angry customers, it’s sad really.
Again I agree, but the developers made PoE to work like this. They didn’t want your average gamer, they wanted a niche gamer for a very niche game. They’ve stated as much, and they are happy with their product. Honestly I admire their work mostly due to the fact they don’t cater to the norm and they build something they knew they would enjoy and hopefully others would enjoy as well that are like minded. Similar to how AoZ is not for everyone, PoE is definitely not for everyone, but then again no game is, some just cast a wider net to attract more average/casual gamers.
Again I agree with your idea, I think it would be a great addition to the game, but realistically speaking I just don’t see it happening. It’s easy for us to nitpick at an obvious flawed game and come up with our own ideas to how it could be better and what systems to implement, but short from having a higher position in Blizzard who can actually have a voice and make bigger changes, we won’t ever see the bigger changes we want.
There are a few on these forums who have come up with various ideas for the game since launch, obviously whether or not they are good or bad is subjective, I’ll just say they’re all met with mixed reviews from the community. However not a single one has been implemented as of yet, not to say they won’t be, but the likely hood of them coming into the game is pretty non-existent at this point. Doesn’t hurt to voice your opinion/ideas, just don’t expect much sadly.
Why?
It all hinges on the implementation of live button remapping, which I highlighted in the post. The concept is exceedingly simple, while the technical realities may be different, which we don’t actually know. I see things being mentioned like “spaghetti code” that play into the trope that Blizzard developers are severely underpaid, severely overworked, and severely incompetent to boot. Like they are some sort of slaves Blizzard got from the garbage bin at the wrong type of market. When you people make these implications are you entirely sure you have any clue whatsoever what you’re talking about? Blizzard, especially now under Microsoft, is one of the leading game developers in the world. They probably need to be smacked more than caressed. I was reading recently how the culture at America’s top universities has changed to the point where professors are telling students to relax and have fun as most people will be given high grades (not exaggerating, highly recommend reading the particular student-penned article I’m referring to). It wouldn’t surprise me if despite some of the squealing that has been fed to the media Blizzard developers actually have it quite alright, without producing much to rave about. Their work environment probably looks like an affluent orphanage replete with special plushies and toys, comfortably furnished in an attractive building, etc. Why is it so popular to portray these people as misfortunates, and then justify why they can’t do much of anything?
Like, really? These mfers can’t implement freaking button remappings without being given a budget of $500 million, a team of 1000, and a three-year schedule? Like I wrote, just start WWIII at that point, the final expansion of the human franchise. It will be worth it, especially if there’s no one left to wield sticks and throw stones.
This is part of my point. Other games don’t have it! Go get it, you dimwitted privileged losers! Leverage your advantages to actually do something significant for a change.
Now there’s something unusual.
This is what I insinuated, for as much as I like to call people idiots. You have to be able to draw something better out of them, which then gets you something better in return.
I’m literally spoon-feeding each individual instruction. It is all explicit to the player.
There’s only one way to reverse that.
And in Blizzard’s shoes I would be just as happy that they are my competitor.
AoZ is for everyone. You just have to grind like a monkey and use a powerful build. Use and exploit parties too. Just because few people may be doing AoZ doesn’t mean the Diablo 4 team actually created something noteworthy. It’s just a fallacy.
It’s easy for me. From my years of experience in Blizzard communities and games it seems almost impossible for everyone else. And there is some incredibly low-hanging fruit. The lack of what I would consider common sense going from the average player to whoever at Blizzard is unbelievable.
All it takes is one actually smart person at Blizzard. Test the extent of their brain drain.
Combos are stupid and repetitive. Smash “1” until it is good, or you alternate and watch buff icons or something? There just aren’t enough Skill slots and the combat mechanics are really shallow.
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I agree with this as well. That’s one of the discussions that many of us had going back to the beta. Why limit ourselves to 6 skills when we could easily get to 10 or more even with controller limitations. Controllers can easily get up to a dozen skills or more and there are games that already play this way such as WoLong Dynasty where you have to react and press buttons in a much tighter window than anything you see in this game.
A reasonable compromise would be 10 skills. Then we aren’t talking about the choice between an offensive or a defensive skill when you can have both.
The game also need to expand the skill tree to give more options either by adding more usable skills, a third choice of modifier, or a third branch of depth within those skills to make it look more like a tree and less like a twig.
Trouble is, they seem dead set on 6 skills and 47 flavours of vanilla. Almost willing to bet they will sell us the other stuff in a future expansion.
You can have an infinite number of skills on 4 buttons, or even 6 if you want to get sweaty about it. You can also implement it in such a manner that you don’t upend the entire game…
Having friends who have worked/are currently working at Blizzard, I can say with absolute certainty that Blizzard is not the place most veteran developers, programmers, engineers, etc. want to work at the moment. As such they hire brand new out of college students who have never worked on a video game in their lives, since those are the only people applying to Blizzard as of the moment.
They are overworked, they are underpaid, and they have a horrible management system where people are written up for being the weakest link in terms of productivity, which creates a hostile work environment for all parties involved because you no longer have co-workers, you have competition. They work in cubicles, side by side, constantly being told to “get it done”. Have you ever wondered why the turn around rate at Blizzard is so bad, and why they’re constantly hiring? People working there can only stand it for so many years before they just quit.
Blizzard uses their own engine to create games with, now this engine has been updated over the years, but it’s also the reason why we can’t have more stash tabs due to the limitations they never fixed from D3. What we might consider basic fundamentals, the blizzard engine would consider revolutionary. There’s a reason their games are so simplistic in nature and don’t advance much. Yes it’s to attract customers but it’s also the limitations of their technology.
I feel as if you think I’ve been disagreeing with you this entire time. I completely agree with you, your idea is solid, it’s creative, innovative, and would be an interesting concept for any Diablo type game. The only point I’ve ever made is that it will never come to D4.
Was just giving an example of complexity, there’s nothing wrong with your instructions or idea at all.
Agreed, but it’ll never happen with a Shareholder Gaming Studio, you know this.
PoE doesn’t hold a candle player wise to any Blizzard game currently out there, aside from maybe HotS. This is on average mind you. Now it’s obvious more people tried out PoE to look for something that was better then D4 since it failed on so many levels as to push players away, but PoE only saw an influx of new players, not retaining those players.
I’d disagree, being one of those people who it is not for. Now is it accessible to everyone? Yes, but that’s completely different. It may not be easily accessible, but it is accessible.
It’s easy for the majority. Also from your many years of experience in Blizzard communities I ask you how many ideas have you seen over the years, either given by yourself or others that would have subjectively made the game better, just be completely ignored by Blizzard?
Unfortunately that’s not how it works. It takes one smart person to pitch the idea, several more to agree to the idea and pitch it to upper management, upper management to have several meetings over it which amount to nothing but small talk about Rob’s cookie of the week. After a few months of this, if you’re lucky the idea will be green lit, and then worked on by the person who originally pitched it, on top of their other duties, whenever they have actual time. Also why they vaguely keep telling us “we’re thinking about ideas but we have nothing concrete to give you today”.
It’s a constant cycle over there of ideas being mostly ignored and working with what they know rather then innovating and changing things up. Up to this point have you seen anything new from D4 that wasn’t already in other ARPG’s?
Now this sounds horrifying.
Why is it not for you?
Are upper management the people on their fireside chats? They always look and sound so nice.
No, but I assumed all the ingredients are there except for a brain to use them. They need that thing from the end of BG3 to tap into them tadpoles. The Absolute, is it? I only saw the ending.